


Tell Me How To Feel Okay

by theinvisibledisaster



Series: Knocking On Heaven's Door [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: A patended Bellarke hug, Arguing, Bellamy Feels Guilty, But she's still posting this, Clarke has feelings, Everyone else just watches, Hakeldama, Heartbreak, Other, Pain, Post Episode 5x09, Public Fighting, Suicide mention, The 100 Season 5 Spoilers, The Author Regrets Everything, because if I have to be in pain so do all of you, canonverse, serious angst, the 100 season 5, the 100 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-08 20:55:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15251856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisibledisaster/pseuds/theinvisibledisaster
Summary: Clarke confronts Bellamy about giving the flame to Madi, in a variety of different ways.a.k.aMy ideas for Hakeldama 2.0I'm so sorry, this gets so angsty, I couldn't help it.





	1. My Heart's Grave

**Author's Note:**

> So I know I said I was going to be mainly working on "I Don't Need Your Love" but I couldn't get this idea out of my head, so I just sat down and vomited it all onto the page. 
> 
> I hope you like it!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hakeldama 2.0: The Screaming Match

_My feet are on the ground I swear_  
_But I'm not moving anywhere_  
_My lungs say that I'm breathing_  
_But when did my heart stop beating?_  
  
_I don't know who I am_  
_Or who I used to be before_  
_You broke me In a thousand pieces_  
_Now tell me how am I to fix this?_  
  
_Don't you try and help me 'cause I know_  
_Only time can heal but it's running out_  
  
_Tell me how to feel to feel OK_  
_Tell me how to feel to feel OK_  
_'Cause I don't know I've been feeling pretty low_  
_Ever since the day you dug my heart's grave..._  
  
**Faouzia - My Heart's Grave**

Once they were safe, holed up in the remains of what used to be a cottage, an odd sort of calm fell over the group – the calm in the eye of the storm. They couldn’t stay long, they would have to find somewhere else soon, get further away from the fighting, but for a few minutes, they could just catch their breath. However, Clarke had been simmering for so long, her rage boiling just below the surface since they’d started running. So while Kane and Diyoza discussed strategy with Shaw and Murphy to their right, and Echo, Raven and Emori talked quietly with Madi to their left, Clarke turned her attention on the source of all her anguish.

He caught her eye and turned towards her in the center of the room.

“Clarke–”

“No!” She cut him off, “No, you don’t get to talk.”

He closed his mouth obediently, nodding once to indicate that he wouldn’t interrupt. 

She took a deep breath, trying to tamp down her emotions, but her voice still sounded so small when she said, _“How could you?”_

He looked like he wanted to reply, to defend himself, but she sharpened her gaze and he dropped his eyes to the floor. 

“When I suggested we kill Octavia, to remove the Wonkru problem once and for all, you said no. Because she’s your sister, and no matter how badly she was poisoning this planet with her desire for war, and her blind hatred, you love her.” Clarke’s voice was shaking with the effort not to yell, “So I changed the plan. We found another way. It didn’t work, but that doesn’t matter. You didn’t want me to hurt your family, so I didn’t.”

Murphy was the first to be drawn out of his conversation, turning away from Shaw to watch Clarke as she stood mere feet away from Bellamy, her voice low and menacing. 

“Then… then you told me that you wanted to put the flame in Madi, and I said no.”

Madi’s head shot up at the mention of her name, and Clarke was dimly aware that she had the entire room’s attention now, but she barely noticed. It was like a twisted form of tunnel vision; all she could see was Bellamy’s face, and her vision was so narrow it almost made her dizzy. 

She felt tears prickling her eyes, and her voice was getting louder, “Because she is a _child_. My child. My _family_. When I threatened your family, and you said no, I worked out something else. If you had just let me out, we could have worked to find an alternative, planned something different, something that would work for us both, something that wouldn’t put my family in danger. But you didn’t. And when I told you to unchain me, so that we could run, _together–”_

Bellamy visibly flinched at the word, and she felt her palm stinging from when she’d slapped him earlier, like a residual echo of the pain they’d caused each other. 

“– you walked away. You left me there. After I told you to protect her, after you _promised me,_ you went behind my back and put her at risk anyway. For what? What did that achieve? Because look around, Bellamy, we’re still at war!”

Raven and Echo, who had been glaring at Clarke, suddenly turned surprised eyes on Bellamy, and Madi looked upset, gaze flicking between the two of them frantically. Kane, Shaw and Diyoza were watching the spectacle stoically, but Diyoza’s hand was drifting closer to her pregnant belly, almost instinctive. Murphy and Emori had drifted closer to each other unconsciously, as if reaching out for each other, for something familiar. 

“Clarke–” He tried again, but she couldn’t stop now.

The unsteady calm she’d been sporting left her in an instant and she was yelling, “No! I was begging you, Bellamy, _I was begging you_. And you just left me there, like I was nothing! Like I didn't matter to you!”

She realised in that moment the real reason she was so angry – it wasn’t just that he’d put her daughter in the firing line, or that he’d ignored her pleas to leave with her, it was that he left her there. He could have untied her, they could have worked out a plan together, but instead, he closed the door in her face. 

_And it hurt._

It felt like she’d been shot, or stabbed, and it ached somewhere in her gut, and behind her eyes, making her see spots. Because this was _Bellamy._ Her face felt hot, burning like Praimfaya in her cheeks, and every muscle in her body was tense, because this wasn’t right. Being angry at Bellamy like this felt unnatural, and her body was rejecting it, trying so desperately to return to how it had been before, when the tear in her chest was only from loss. It was a reflection, a mirror of when he’d yelled at her for staying with Lexa while their people died, but this was worse, so much worse, because now she knew she loved him. Which made his betrayal an indescribable kind of agony. 

He could barely meet her eyes, and the shame on his face was clear, but it wasn’t enough. 

She wanted him to _feel it._

“You betrayed me. I loved you, and you betrayed me,” she hissed, and there it was – his head shot up and he stared back at her, matching her ferocity with an anguish of his own. The flicker behind his eyes that hinted at the true depths of the shame he felt. His eyes shone with tears and his Adam’s apple was jumping as he tried to swallow his emotions.

"Clarke, please, you have to understand, I was only trying to keep you safe, to keep everyone safe," Bellamy said urgently, "I poisoned my sister to protect you, if she woke up and no-one was commander, she would have killed you!"

"That's why I wanted to run!" She spat, and he swallowed and stared at his hands.

"I couldn't risk it, Clarke, I couldn't risk _you_! I couldn't lose you again!"

It was like all the air had gone, and everyone in the room held their breath as they waited to see how she would react. They all knew it, knew better than she did just how wrecked he had been after she died, but they didn't know how much of her hope she'd pinned on his return. How let down she felt. So rather than making her realise he loved her, rather than making her feel better, it only left a sour taste in her mouth. 

There was red in her vision, and she went for the sucker punch before she could stop herself; the words tripped out of her mouth and she slammed it closed a fraction too late, "Well you have!"

And oh god she wished she could take it back. Because the look on his face was worse than torture, it was like staring into the void, and having death stare back. She was still burning up, but her blood suddenly ran ice cold. His face was crumpled and broken and she had completely destroyed him. 

It was what she'd been waiting for.

But it didn’t feel like she wanted it to. 

She wanted to enjoy it, to relish in the way he felt, but it just made her feel worse. She wanted to reach out and brush the crease from between his brows, to understand why he would do what he did. Her fury started to dissipate, and her voice broke, her heart beating the torture through her veins. 

“You left me there. I was begging you to just leave her out of it, _begging you_ to come back and let me out, and you _left me,_ ” the tears spilled down her cheeks, and now the anger was gone, replaced with all the emotions the anger had been hiding, all the pain and the loss. The absence of him in her life for so many years, the space he used to occupy that had filled up with grief and agony and heartache was now tinged with something else, something worse. She sobbed, her knees suddenly struggling to support her weight. 

She’d been carrying it with her for so long – bearing it, for him – because she loved him, and he was coming back. Then, he’d come back, but he was with his new family, and he loved someone else, and it was like they didn’t know each other anymore. She had tried to entertain the possibility that they would find their way back to each other, like they always did, but it seemed more and more like the unachievable dream of a girl who was forced to grow up in war, and left alone on a dying world. 

When he told her that he poisoned his sister, she had been surprised. Because six years ago, he would never have done that, but she knew it was true, because he stood in front of her, wracked with guilt for what he’d done. That was nothing compared to how he looked now: he was defeated, standing in front of Clarke like he was expecting to be punched or kicked or shoved, but she wasn’t going to do that again. She couldn’t. 

She wanted so desperately for him to suffer like she was, but she couldn’t do that to him, she wasn’t like Octavia. She couldn’t take her problems out on everyone else, she bore them, so they didn’t have to. It was who she was. 

_“You left me, again,_ ” she whispered through tear-soaked lips, completely empty, devoid of strength, and dropped to the floor. 

But she never reached it. Bellamy caught her, his arms around her waist as he held her up, and then she was crying hysterically into his shirt, scrunching her fingers into it as she gripped at him. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, and she knew that he was crying too, because she could feel the damp spreading down her shoulder. 

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, his breathe hitching in her ear, “I’m so, so sorry Clarke.”

She was shaking, and his arms were the only thing holding her together, because she was sure she was going to fall apart. 

He pulled her in tighter and she sobbed, the noise loud in the dead silence of the house. 

_“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry,_ ” he kept mumbling into her neck, and this was what she had been waiting for, for six years. To be in Bellamy’s arms, regardless of the state of the world around them, and to have him reassure her like he used to. Some days, it had been the only thing that kept her going, the thought of folding into him, spinning in each other’s orbits the way it was supposed to be. 

“I’m so sorry, Clarke, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for leaving,” he said, voice thick with emotion, “and you can hate me, and you can push me away, but I’m not going anywhere. _I’m never leaving you again.”_

She didn’t hate him, she couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried. 

Her sobs became strangled as her breathing became ragged, unable to draw deep enough breaths to maintain her anguish, and she felt light-headed from the lack of oxygen. She hadn’t cried like this in years, hadn’t just let out everything had had been pent up for so long, and it felt awful, but she could feel the weight lifting just slightly from her shoulders. 

“I’m sorry,” she cried into his chest, and she could feel him shaking his head. 

“It's okay, Clarke, you were just trying to protect Madi," he said, and he straightened, hands cupping her face, forcing her eyes up. 

She looked up at him, blue into brown, sky into earth, and she felt her heart shatter. Because fuck, she loved him so much. He had hurt her, but how many times had she hurt him while trying to do the right thing? How often had he been frustrated when she used her head? 

Now he had been logical, decided the best plan with only his head, left his heart out of it, and she had tried to despise him for it. 

The guilt hit her like a tidal wave, cutting off her air, and she gripped his forearms, “I shouldn't have slapped you. I should never have left you there, I should have gone back for you sooner, I should have–”

“No, Clarke, it’s okay,” he said softly, tears clinging to his lashes. 

_“Nothing is okay,”_ she whimpered, and he closed his eyes. She knew exactly where he went, because it was the same place her own mind had vanished to – six years ago, in the rover, when she’d said the exact same thing after threatening to shoot him. 

She thought he might say something else, might try to reassure them both, but instead, he just wrapped her back up in his arms, one hand tangling into her hair as he held her close. She nosed against his neck, leaving pools of tears in the dip of his collarbone, but he only drew her in closer. 

“I forgive you,” he said quietly, and her nails dug into his back, gripping at him uncontrollably. 

“I forgive you,” she wept back, and it might have been her imagination when he pressed his lips to neck, but maybe it wasn’t, maybe, like for her, just a hug wasn’t enough anymore. 

They had time to think about that later – they would _make_ time – but right now, they needed to get out of there, because the distant screams of war were getting closer. 

“We need to move,” Raven snapped, and they stepped apart, but Bellamy left his hand on her arm, keeping her close. 

Clarke glanced around, wiping her eyes, embarrassed and defensive, but no-one was looking at her the way she expected. She thought maybe they’d still be mad at her for leaving Bellamy behind, or perhaps they would think she was pathetic, and pity her for crying. Instead, they were all staring back at her with something akin to exhilaration, or relief. 

Madi was hopping from foot to foot, gaping between her and Bellamy, trying to conceal her smirk and failing miserably. Clarke wasn’t the only one who’d been waiting for this to happen, it seemed. 

Murphy was practically beaming at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back self-consciously. 

“C’mon Clarke, what’s the plan?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at her, “how do we get out of here?”

She glanced at Bellamy, but he was staring back at her expectantly, and she frowned in his direction, confused. 

He just squeezed her elbow, “Whatever you decide, Princess, we’ll do it together.”

Bellamy never wavered from Clarke’s side, and she found herself curling her fingers into his shirt, just to have her hands on him somehow, as she pointed across the map on the table.

And as the gunfire got louder, and the shrieks of warriors became more piercing, the group of old friends and unlikely new ones planned an escape, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Urgh, that was hard to write, but if I didn't get it out, it was going to kill me. 
> 
> So, do you hate me now? 
> 
> Me too. 
> 
> Come and yell at me on [tumblr!](https://talistheintrovert.tumblr.com/)  
> Or my [writing tumblr](https://introvertedtaliswrites.tumblr.com/), where I take prompt requests and such!


	2. I Have Made Mistakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But what if their confrontation was less of an explosion and more of a discussion?
> 
> After the war ends, when Bellamy and Clarke finally have a quiet moment to talk about what they mean to each other.
> 
> This is less Hakeldama 2.0 and more like the beach conversation in 3x13, because sometimes angst hurts too much and I need something a little milder so I don't implode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO I HAD ANOTHER IDEA.  
> This one is a LOT milder, and more sweet, which is nice. 
> 
> Don't worry, I have at least one more idea in the works that is full of explosive angst.

_I have made mistakes, I continue to make them_  
_The promises I've made, I continue to break them_  
_All the doubts I've faced, I continue to face them_  
_Nothing is a waste, if you learn from it_  
  
_And the sun, it does not cause us_  
_The sun, it does not cause us to grow_  
_It is the rain that will strengthen_  
_The rain that will strengthen your soul_  
_It will make you whole_  
  
_And oh my heart, how can I face you now?_  
_We both know how badly I_  
_How badly I have let you down_  
_I am afraid_  
_I am afraid of all that I've built_  
_Fading away_  
**I Have Made Mistakes - The Oh Hellos**

Clarke was curled up on the cot she had picked as her bed, the one closest to the door. It was in the corner, against the wall and it had a perfect view of the room, which was what she needed - if she woke up in the night, terrified that this was all a dream, she only had to look up to see her friends. They were safe. If she hadn’t snagged it, she probably would have ended up sleeping outside, but she got lucky. She was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, her back against the wall, and she was trying not to look at anyone else in the room.

There were fifteen cots in the place, and while it was a big area, fifteen beds made it more than a little cramped. Bellamy was against the wall perpendicular to hers, but he hadn’t so much as glanced in her direction and had spent the majority of the evening in discussion with Indra. Madi had chosen a bed neck to Raven and Echo, as far away from Clarke as she could get, and Monty and Harper were by one of the windows together. Diyoza had somehow ended up right in the middle, which apparently suited her just fine, and Kane and Abby had decided to sleep in the doctor’s surgery to make more space. 

She was glad they had managed to take back the valley, relieved that they had all come away relatively unharmed, but she knew she wasn’t out of the woods just yet. Bellamy had been scowling the whole evening, and Raven and Echo still refused to even look at her. Clarke knew, on some level, that she deserved it: she did leave him for dead. 

Yet she couldn’t shake her frustration at the fact that the whole situation could have been avoided if he had just talked to her, instead of going behind her back and giving Madi the flame. Gone were the days when they looked to each other for guidance, it seemed. 

Her chest had been tight, constricted, ever since he had walked out of the cell, refusing to meet her eyes as she begged with him to reconsider. Now that the war was over and the valley was theirs, she thought it might get easier to breathe, but it never did. It didn’t matter how deep the breath she took was, it never quite felt like enough. 

Madi was annoyed at her too, sulking from across the room, and Clarke sighed, staring down at her hands. There was still someone else’s blood on them, not to mention her own. She vaguely registered that she should probably go and clean herself up, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.

“Rough night?” A familiar voice asked, as someone flopped down next to her. 

She nodded, still staring into her lap, “You could say that.”

Murphy bumped his shoulder against hers, “Cheer up, Clarke. It could be worse. You could be McCreary.”

Clarke snorted, and the noise ricocheted through the quiet hall. She knew that people had turned their heads to look at her, but she kept her gaze pointed only at her hands. 

“I’d rather be McCreary,” she muttered, thinking back to the horrific state of the man’s body the last time she’d seen it.

“Whoa, that is a rough night,” Murphy said teasingly, but there was a gravity to his tone that hadn’t been there before, “Seriously though, Griffin, you alright?”

She took a shuddering breath, and it still wasn’t enough, _“No.”_

Immediately, Murphy’s bony arm was around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. It was like he had flipped a switch, and then she was leaning into him while tears poured down her cheeks. To his credit, he didn’t freak out, like he probably would have done six years ago. He just sat with her, stroking her upper arm with the hand draped over her. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?” He asked. 

“I don’t know what to do, Murphy,” she sniffed, wiping her cheek. 

He chuckled, “that’s a first.”

She elbowed him, but there was no weight behind it, and he just reached out with his free hand to hold one of hers. When had Murphy become the person she leaned on for comfort? Probably around the time she realised Bellamy wasn’t that person anymore. She loved Raven, but they were hardly the touchy-feel type, and Murphy seemed to bring out a side of Clarke that she didn’t often reveal, and vice versa. Maybe that was why she actually said what she had been thinking for the last two weeks. 

“Sometimes I wish I’d died in Praimfaya,” she whispered, and it wasn’t the first time she’d said it aloud, but it was the first time she’d ever said it to another person. 

Murphy’s grip on her hand tightened and he paused for a long moment, before he said, “sometimes I wish I’d died in the lighthouse bunker.”

She finally tore her eyes from her fingers to look up at him, and he stared solemnly back. She had half-expected him to undercut her admission with a joke, but he was matching hers with one of his own. It made her heart ache. 

“Yeah?” she asked quietly. 

“Yeah,” he swallowed, “I almost followed through with it too – picked up a gun and everything.”

“Me too,” Clarke confessed, “before Madi, I was just… _I was so alone_ , and lost, and I thought it didn’t matter, it _wouldn’t_ matter if I died. I held a gun to my head, and then, somehow, like a miracle, I found the valley... but I almost did it. My finger was on the trigger.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and she knew he meant it. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t do it,” she muttered, “maybe if I was dead, when you came back to Earth you could have brokered peace with Diyoza without threatening her people, and kept Octavia calm long enough to share the valley.”

Murphy shook his head, “don’t do that, Clarke, don’t think about that. It doesn’t lead anywhere good.”

She waited for him to continue, knowing that he wanted to elaborate, but that he was afraid of saying it aloud, just like she was. 

“When we first got to space, Bellamy was a wreck, so was Raven – and so was I. But I always felt like my emotions weren’t… good enough, somehow. I spent a lot of time thinking about what would have happened if you, or Jasper, or someone else had lived, instead of me. I worked out pretty quickly that everyone had a purpose up there, except me. I was worthless, I didn’t matter. And I spiralled – I started thinking that if I didn’t contribute anything, why was I even there? Why had the universe been so cruel that it had taken Clarke _“I sacrificed myself so that Bellamy can spend six years making speeches about that sacrifice” _Griffin, but it had left me alone? So I did what I always do; I put on my devilishly charming façade, and I got on with my day.”__

____

____

“You mean you were a bad-tempered asshole?” 

“Yes, I was a bad-tempered asshole,” he admitted, and she managed a small smile, “but no-one noticed the difference. I wasn’t Murphy grieving his friend, or even Murphy struggling with suicide, I was just… _Murphy_. It’s not their fault they didn’t notice – it’s no-one else’s job to take care of you, you’ve gotta do that yourself.”

“Wise of you,” Clarke raised an eyebrow. 

“Don’t look so surprised, Clarke,” he flashed her a grin, “it’s the first lesson you learn as a cockroach: look after you first. When we first got to the ground, I used it as a justification to be selfish, but once everything with A.L.I.E happened, I realised it meant I had to pay attention to my brain, not just use it for witty zingers.”

“Oh, but I love your witty zingers!” Clarke protested, the teasing accompanied with a watery smile. 

“Well can you tell Madi, ‘cause she doesn’t think I’m funny,” he complained. 

Clarke sobered quickly as she glanced over at her daughter, who was chatting animatedly to Raven by the table. Madi seemed to sense she was being watched and shot her a dirty look while Raven’s back was turned, not that Raven would have protested it – she’d been sending over some harsh glares of her own. 

“She hates me,” she said, guilt creeping up her spine. 

Murphy smacked her shoulder lightly, “don’t be ridiculous.”

Clarke felt the tears dripping over her lashes again, “they all do, Murphy. I don’t blame them, I let my anger cloud my judgement, and I put Bellamy in danger. He could have died, because of me!”

“No, he could have died because of Octavia,” he chastised.

Now it was Clarke’s turn to shake her head, frantically, like she couldn’t say no hard enough, “it would have been my fault Murphy. I just left him there. What kind of person does that to someone they love? _What’s wrong with me?”_

The room had quietened slightly, and she knew that more of her friends were watching her now, but she couldn't look up. She didn't know if they were pitying her or hating her, but it didn't matter - either way, she felt awful. She dissolved into sobs again, and pressed her forehead into her knees, trying to will herself out of existence. 

“Hey, hey, Clarke, everything is gonna be okay,” Murphy said, and he’d never sounded so soft, or so sure of anything. 

But she couldn’t believe it. 

She couldn’t allow herself to get her hopes up again, only for them to be dashed like a rowboat against the rocks by a turbulent ocean. 

“When?” she snapped, and she knew that almost the whole room had noticed the outburst, but she couldn’t seem to lower her voice, “when is everything going to be okay, Murphy? A week from now, a year? Because from what I’ve seen, that’s not an option here. We never stop hurting the people we love! We just take _everything_ from each other; we fight and we destroy and we ruin everything, and I don’t want to do any of it anymore! I think Jasper had the right goddamn idea.”

She registered Monty and Harper’s shocked gasps, and she knew that a few people had stepped towards her, but she didn’t care. She slid off her bed and threw the door open, stomping away into the forest. She managed to get about a hundred feet before she collapsed against the thick trunk of a tree, hidden from view, and slid down to the forest floor. 

_Why did everything hurt so much?_

She wished she could just sink into the ground and let the Earth take her, like it had spent so many years trying to, but instead, she was forced to stay alive, to keep making harder and harder decisions. Maybe one day one of those decisions would manage to kill her, and the Earth would finally get its way.

She was sitting in a numb kind of panic – her anxiety was off the charts, twisting in her gut and cutting of her oxygen, but from the outside, she was just sitting, staring vacantly out into the underbrush. 

She could faintly hear Murphy calling out to her, but there was no moon in the sky, and she was far enough away from the lights that he could search for hours and not find her. 

“Clarke, c’mon, come back inside!” He yelled, “I don’t want to have to admit that I’m worried about you, but I will do it.”

There was a dramatic pause. 

“Fine, I admit it, _I’m worried about you!”_ He bellowed, and she managed a small smile, but she still didn’t move, “please come back, Clarke, or at least… don’t do anything I would do. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“No promises,” she muttered to herself, and eventually, John realised that he was never going to see her in the dark. She thought he might go inside, but when she glanced around the tree, he had propped himself up against the wall of the building, staring out into the inky black of the forest, waiting. 

She sighed, turning back to face the wall of darkness in front of her. She could see her hand in front of her face, but not much past it, and she tried to remember how it used to feel. How the valley used to almost buzz with energy around her, how even in the dark, it felt alive, practically incandescent with life and hope. Now it felt flat and weighed down with the weight of all the bodies littering the ground, drenched with the blood of grounders and miners alike. Or maybe the valley hadn’t changed at all – maybe it was her.

Maybe she was the one who was heavy with the weight of all she’d done, all she’d been through. 

Maybe the valley deserved better than Wanheda. 

“Clarke?” his voice was rough, low, but it was unmistakable, it always had been. She tried to shrink further into herself, but he practically tripped over her, he was so close. 

“Go away, Bellamy,” she groaned.

“No,” he said sternly, taking his place next to her against the trunk, similar to how they had first become friends, on the day trip that went horribly wrong so many years ago. 

“Just leave me alone,” she muttered, “why are you even out here?”

“I was looking for you,” he said, like it was obvious. 

She barked out a cheerless laugh, “why? I slapped you. I left you to die. Why would you ever want to talk to me again?”

“I’m more worried you’ll never want to talk to me again,” he breathed, “because I hurt you, when I gave Madi the flame. I did something that I knew you might never forgive me for – I don’t blame you for hitting me. I’m upset that you left me for dead, but I understand it. Our priorities were different, in the moment: you wanted to keep Madi safe, and I was only thinking about keeping you alive, and I didn’t care what I had to do to do it. I would rather you were alive and never spoke to me again than if you had died and I could have done something to save you. I took a chance. Then when it failed, it damaged us both more than I thought it would.”

They were silent for a moment as their mutual pain sunk in, soaking the surrounding foliage with their grief and hurt and loneliness. The never-ending blackness of the night seemed to amplify it and throw it back at them, making it feel bigger, like it was surrounding them where they sat, in constant danger crushing them. 

She felt the tears start anew, still laughing without humour as they made her body shake, “Why do we keep hurting each other?”

He sighed and reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together. She felt the warmth radiate up from where their palms touched, her pulse carrying it up to her chest, where her heart tightened around it, holding it close. 

“Because when you love someone, you can’t help but hurt them, and be hurt by them,” he said, “it’s how you know you love them.”

 _“Should it hurt this much?”_ She asked desperately, her heartbeat in her ears, and she knew she’d struck a nerve in him as well, because his hand tightened fractionally around hers. 

He kept his head forward, staring into the dark, “I don’t know.”

“It’s not fair,” Clarke hissed, “we never had a chance.”

He leaned a little closer, “we have one now.”

She scoffed, kicking at the dirt with her heel, “no, we don’t. You’re in love with Echo, and your priority will always be the rest of your family. Madi hates me, Raven hates me, you should hate me, and we just fought a horrifying, destructive war in the only green place left. There’s no chance for us, Bellamy, there never was. We were doomed the day you all got into that rocket six years ago.”

“Clarke–”

“Not to mention, I’m a mess. I’m a complete and total wreck of a person, and I destroy everything, just like the grounders have always known. _The mighty Wanheda._ I feel more like Midas, cursed to walk the world alone – I can’t touch anything I care about, because it will inevitably end up dying, or becoming so twisted it may as well have. My dad, Wells, Charlotte, Finn, Lexa, hell, even my Mom… you should take Madi and get as far away from me as possible,” she said bitterly, uprooting a plant as she smacked her foot harder into the ground. 

“Clarke, that’s not true,” he said earnestly, and she shook her head. 

“It is, Bellamy. You can’t love the Commander of Death and come away unscathed.”

“Good thing I’m not in love with the Commander of Death then,” he said casually, “I’m in love with you.”

Clarke froze.

She wasn’t expecting that. 

She opened her mouth to respond, but she couldn’t find the words. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m still angry that you left me to die,” he said quietly, “but for some reason, that doesn’t weaken my feelings for you at all. I hate you, but I love you. Is that an oxymoron?”

She laughed, a real one, and as it rang out, the air around them seemed a little less suffocating. 

“I should have gone back for you sooner,” she said, guilt sitting in her throat, “I shouldn’t have let my heart rule my head.”

“Sometimes it’s a good thing,” he pointed out, “If I had used my heart a bit more, I would have seen just how damaging making that decision would be for Madi, and you, and us. But I was focussed on fixing the problem, so busy trying not to acknowledge my heart that it took me by surprise when you pummelled it into the dirt.”

Clarke rested her head against his shoulder. 

“I wish we didn’t keep doing this to each other,” she murmured. 

“Maybe we don’t have to anymore,” he suggested, “maybe we won’t be put in those positions again, where we have to choose between each other and the world.”

“When have we ever been that lucky?”

He snorted, “Never.”

“So what’s the point?” She said suddenly, “If all we do is cause pain, why should we even try?”

Bellamy twisted to look at her, and his face was close enough that she could see it through the dark, inches from her own. The expression adorning it was pained, but there was something else there too, a gentleness that he after all these years, he still seemed to reserve for her. 

“Because if we don’t try it now, Princess, then all those years of suffering were for nothing.”

“You make a good point,” she acknowledged, “but may I counter with – we’re just going to hurt each other.”

“We hurt each other anyway, Clarke, we may as well do it while being open about how much we love each other too.”

“Since when did you get so logical?” She groaned. 

“Since your dying wish was for me to use my head,” he sat back again, and even though she could no longer see him, she knew he was rolling his eyes. 

“Actually, I’m pretty sure I wanted you to hurry,” Clarke snarked. 

“Those were your last words, not the same as a dying wish,” he teased back, and now she was the one rolling her eyes into the night sky. 

“I was going to tell you I loved you,” she whispered, and if the night hadn’t been so silent, she didn’t think Bellamy would be able to hear her, “before we split up, I was going to say it. I almost... but I didn't. I’ve spent six years running over that moment in my head. Maybe things would be different if I’d just said it.”

“There are a hundred moments you could have told me, and a hundred more when I should have told you. If we spend time going over all of them, we’ll never actually get anywhere.”

He had a point. But how was she supposed to move forward, if everything in her life kept trying to drag her into the past, where she belonged?

“I’m still furious with you for betraying me,” she said.

“I know.”

“But I do love you.” It was a difficult thing to admit, but once the words passed her lips, she found she had no desire to take them back. She loved Bellamy Blake, and there was no point trying to hide from it anymore. 

“I know.” He didn’t sound certain though, and she squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“And I’m… scared.” She took a shuddering breath, feeling the oxygen finally fill up her chest like she'd been waiting for, brushing against her ribs and melding with the warmth still held there by her heart.

“Me too, Clarke,” he murmured, turning his head into her hair, the words wrapping themselves around the strands like a promise, “but I love you, and I want to savour every moment I have with you, before the universe snatches you away again.”

She didn’t know what to say, she wasn’t sure anything would be enough, so she stayed mute. They sat that way until the sun started to bathe the trees in flecks of gold, hands intertwined, eyes staring out into the shadows as they filled up the space around them with all the words unsaid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this made me feel better about 509, so that's a positive step forward!
> 
> Come and cry with me on [tumblr!](https://talistheintrovert.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Or send me prompts or request on my [writing tumblr.](https://introvertedtaliswrites.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you for your kudos and comments, I love them so much.


	3. You Keep Tearing Me Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy starts the fight instead of Clarke, and shit gets real.

_Consuming all the air inside my lungs_  
_Ripping all the skin from off my bones_  
_I'm prepared to sacrifice my life_  
_I would gladly do it twice_  
_Consuming all the air inside my lungs_  
_Ripping all the skin from off my bones_  
_I'm prepared to sacrifice my life_  
I would gladly do it twice  
_Please have mercy on me_  
_Take it easy on my heart_  
_Even though you don't mean to hurt me_  
_You keep tearing me apart_  
_Would you please have mercy on me_  
**Mercy – Shawn Mendes**

Bellamy had been bitter the whole way back to the camp, and Clarke was still angry at him, matching his harsh glares with sharp glances of her own. Echo, Raven, Monty and Harper were also acting more than a little frosty around her, and she found she didn’t want to be anywhere near the people she loved. Madi had bounded up to him, hugging him around the waist, which only worsened Clarke’s mood. She turned away from them and left the room, stomping down to the river to hunt for food. She stayed away for hours, refusing to admit that she felt lonelier now than she'd ever felt in her life.

Later, when they were all eating dinner, Raven sat down next to her, taking her completely by surprise. She blinked over at her, curious.

“They’ll come around,” Raven said casually, dangling some fish in front of her face.

“I’m surprised you have,” Clarke admitted, taking the offering with a small smile. Raven sat back in her chair and rolled her eyes, and it was like it had always been, like nothing had ever changed. 

She scoffed, “Please, Griffin, after everything we’ve been through, it was never a question of forgiving you, it was just how long it would take. But I’ve spent six years missing you, and I’m not going to waste any of the time I actually have with you now.”

“I missed you too,” Clarke breathed, leaning into her slightly. 

Raven shook her head, “No, Clarke, we thought you were dead. We grieved. We mourned you. Bellamy was a wreck. Monty and Harper were devastated, Murphy was pissed off, Emori was sad, even Echo seemed to understand, but… I was so…”

She trailed off, and Clarke realised that her friend was trying not to cry. 

“You were my friend Clarke, and you had sacrificed yourself for me. And it just… it reminded me of all the times I had held a grudge against you or snapped at you instead of helping, and all you ever did was continue doing what you had to. God, I will never understand how you managed to stay standing some days, when everything was on you and no-one was willing to help, or even sympathise.”

Clarke shrugged, “some days I didn’t.”

Raven’s grip tightened around her drink as the first tears fell onto the wooden table, “I’m so sorry, Clarke.”

Her body was wracked with sobs, and Clarke curled an arm around her shoulder, “you have nothing to be sorry for, Raven. I did what I had to do. It was–”

“–The only choice,” she finished for her, “yeah, I remember that one.”

“I wish I’d had another choice,” Clarke said ruefully, and Raven wiped her eyes, the moment over, taking their empty plates as she stood. 

“Me too. You should make the right one now.” She said cryptically and ducked away to the kitchen to wash up. 

It didn’t take long to work out what Raven had been talking about: Bellamy was making his way towards her from across the room. He towered over her, the table separating them, and she sat up a little straighter, squaring up to him. 

“What do you want?” She asked curtly. 

His jaw twitched, “I thought we could talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Clarke muttered, and she could see the frustration building in the way he held himself, arms becoming rigid at his sides. The table between them suddenly became no-man’s-land: a divide between two enemies as they aimed bullets carved in anguish. 

“Well I have something to say to you,” Bellamy growled, and she crossed her arms defiantly. 

“Unless it involves an apology, I don’t want to hear it.”

The people around them had started to notice, but Bellamy didn’t seem to care any more than she did. 

“That depends, are _you_ sorry?”

“I went back for you,” Clarke said, her tone clipped, cold. 

Bellamy’s expression darkened and she was suddenly flashing back to six years earlier when he’d looked at her the same way – yelling at her that he’d left her, that he’d left everyone. She tried to suppress the twinge of guilt as she looked up at him, but she couldn’t, and it pulsed into her chest, making her feel sick. 

He stepped forward almost menacingly, rage etched into his features. 

“Am I supposed to be thanking you?” he snapped, “you left me there to die, Clarke.”

“You’re fine.”

“You didn’t know that when you abandoned me to die!” He slammed a hand down between them, making the wood rattle, “You knew Octavia would throw me in the pit, or have me executed, and you left anyway!”

 _“You left me first!”_ Clarke yelled, and the room fell silent. She bit her lip as if that would negate what she’d just said, but she had no such luck. The words hung in the air, poisoning the atmosphere, making it toxic.

The tow of them stared at each other, chests heaving, locked in a furious stand-off while everyone they loved watched in stunned silence. Raven was the first to come to her senses. She grabbed Shaw’s hand and tugged at Madi’s elbow, “C’mon guys, let’s leave them alone for a minute.”

Everyone seemed to get the message, trailing out after them, until it was only Bellamy and Clarke, still just silently battling, each waiting for the other to break first. 

Bellamy did, “I’ve seen you do some terrible things in the name of keeping people safe, _Wanheda_ , but I’ve never seen you abandon anyone before.”

He spat the name at her the way he’d always done – like a curse-word, something foul and threatening – and she almost flinched from the venom in his voice. 

“You brought it on yourself,” she hissed back, shame seeping into her fury, fuelling it.

“I didn’t have another choice–”

“You could have run with me!”

“Octavia would have found us.”

“But we would have been _together_. We could have kept each other safe, and instead you forced the flame on a child. _You_ put me in that position – I had to choose between you and Madi, and I picked Madi.”

“No, you walked away, Clarke, that is not the same thing.”

“Like _you_ walked away, like you left me chained, begging you to come back?”

For a moment, there was a flash of guilt on his features, but it quickly fell back to anger, “Goddammit Clarke, I was trying to _save_ you!” He bellowed. 

“I didn’t ask you to save me! I asked you to save _her!”_ She shouted back, matching him in volume and then some. She stood, kicking her chair back hard enough for it to topple loudly to the floor, “I asked you to protect her, and _you let me down!”_

He looked stricken, but he managed to hold it together long enough to say, “Six years ago, you would never have done that, you would never have left knowing I would die if you did.”

“You would.” Clarke was leaning forward, meeting his gaze steadily, but her voice was lower now, “six years ago, if it was Octavia, you would.” 

He closed his mouth so hard his teeth clacked. Because she was right. Six years ago, if someone had threatened his sister, even if it was Clarke, he would have torn their head off, or left them for dead. There were times when Clarke had put her in danger and he’d nearly walked away, so he understood, somewhere beneath his anger, why she did what she did. That didn’t make it easier to deal with.

“Which is beside the point,” Clarke spat, “I would never have done that if you hadn’t betrayed me first.”

He threw his head back, _“unbelievable!”_

“I’m unbelievable? You forced the flame on a child.”

“Madi took it willingly, to protect you.”

“That is not her job! And it’s not yours either, it hasn’t been for a long time.”

“I tried to save you, and you left me for dead.”

“You made your choice,” Clarke yelled; _and it wasn’t me_ , she wanted to scream. 

Bellamy rolled his eyes, so irritated that she couldn’t just admit that he was trying to do the right thing when he took Madi that he couldn’t stop himself from reacting in anger, “Sometimes I wish we’d stayed on the Ring.”

He regretted it the second he said it, because he didn’t mean it, because he only said it to wound her, but it was out there now, like a slap in the face. Her eyes narrowed in the way they always did when she was on the warpath.

“Yeah? _Me too_.” She balled her hands into fists, fuming.

He faltered a little, and his chest throbbed like a punch in the gut, radiating out from where her words had taken root in his heart. 

She didn’t love him. Maybe she never had, but she never would now. He’d lost her for good. He looked at the woman he loved and he barely recognised her, and maybe that was why he yelled, _“I don’t even know who you are anymore!_ You’re not the woman I left behind.”

“And you’re not the man I radioed every day for six years,” Clarke snapped, realising too late how exposed she was, like a livewire with a dangerous current running through it, frayed and sparking hazardously in every direction. She’d made her feelings clear, far too clear, and now she was in danger of admitting more, fraying the wire further. She pressed her lips together and nodded once, to herself, before she took a step away from the table. 

“What?” he asked, and it was hoarse, like all the wind had been knocked out of him.

“Forget it, Bellamy, it doesn’t matter,” she took another step back, trying to put as much distance between them as possible, and glanced at the door, wondering if she could make a break for it. 

“No, it does, _it matters_ ,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, but she didn’t dare look at him. 

“I can’t do this,” she muttered. She kept her gaze firmly locked on the door as she started moving towards it, but before she got there, Bellamy was standing in front of it, fingers wrapped around the handle. She stared down at his hand so that she didn’t have to see his face.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said slowly, brain whirring, “what radio?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. She may as well get it over with now, “I have a radio, and I called you, every day.”

“Since when?”

“Since I got it working,” she said quietly, “six years ago.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Clarke,” his voice cracked a little, and he stepped towards her, but she flinched away. He froze, hands in the air between them, “it matters. _It matters to me.”_

Clarke reached her breaking point. The frayed wire became an electric inferno, blazing through her veins as she finally screamed the words she’d wanted to since the minute he’d reached the ground:

“It clearly _doesn’t_ matter to you! I radioed you, every day, for six years! _I was alone_ – you left and I was all alone, the last person alive in the world, and I called you because I _missed you_ and I _loved you_ and I _wished you were here_. Even after I found Madi, I still called you, because I had to hold onto the hope that you could hear me, that you were listening, that you were waiting, like me. I told myself that just because you weren’t talking back it didn’t mean that you weren’t there. But it was stupid, because you weren’t there. You weren’t waiting for me; you were too busy making a new family on the Ark!”

Tears were streaming down her face and she was sure that even through the walls, everyone in the valley had heard her. So much for keeping her feelings to herself. She dropped her gaze to her shoes, breathing heavily, hands shaking uncontrollably.

Bellamy gaped at her, overwhelmed with her confession, and her pain and her loneliness. He wanted to reach out and hold her in his arms, but he knew she wouldn’t let him. She was curled in on herself, staring at the ground, muscles tensed for a fight, or maybe to run. This was the most vulnerable he’d ever seen Clarke, and he wasn’t sure what to do. 

“Clarke–”

 _“You never stopped being my family, Bellamy, but you made it damn clear that I’m no longer yours!”_ she snarled, never looking more like a wounded animal than in that moment, and Bellamy’s heart stopped. 

He hadn’t realised. He had never stopped to think how those words might have affected her, when he threw them in her face while she was tied up. He hadn’t mean it that way, but she clearly didn’t know, because she looked so completely destroyed, so desolate and broken. And he had done that. He had broken her. 

“Clarke, please,” his fingers brushed against her elbow and she recoiled violently. 

_“Don’t touch me!”_ She screamed hysterically, tears pooling under her chin, and he realised dimly that he was crying too. 

She was still backing away from him, eyes darting around the room as she looked at everything except him. 

“I’m so sorry,” it came out in a rush, pouring forth like a wave, “I’m so, _so_ sorry, Clarke, but it was the only choice. You were going to die, if Octavia hadn’t woken up and killed you, her men would have had you executed anyway. It was an impossible situation and I did the best I could. I would never have let anything happen to Madi. I hated that we had to use the flame – but it was all we had left. I couldn’t risk anything else. I couldn’t risk it when you were in danger. I couldn’t… _I couldn’t lose you again.”_

Clarke’s hands were making fists at her sides, but she was staring at his shirt, like she was trying to will herself into looking up, to meeting his gaze. 

“You have always been my family, Clarke. That has never changed, not once. Even when I thought you were dead for six years, I _never_ stopped loving you, _not ever.”_

Her eyes finally flicked up to meet his, and as he tripped into them, falling endlessly into those galaxies pooled with tears, he knew she loved him back. The look of fear and anger was tempered with something like wonder, her lips parted in surprise. He moved forward and this time she didn’t back off: she was rooted to the spot. 

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said softly, “I never meant to.”

She sobbed, covering her face with her hands, and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her into his chest. She was shuddering with the force of her tears, and he knew he couldn’t be doing much better, but he just tightened his grip and cried silently into her shoulder. 

“I’m s-sorry I left you behind,” she was muffled, but it didn’t matter, “ _I’m so sorry, Bellamy_ , I should never have… _I can’t_ … I thought you didn’t care, and I… it _hurt_. It hurt so much, and I shouldn’t have hit you, I shouldn’t have left you there, but it _hurt so much_. You didn’t care, and it broke my heart.”

He made a small noise in his chest, one of pain and regret, _“I’m so sorry, Clarke.”_

She was clutching at his shirt, and he was pretty sure she’d ripped it, but it didn’t matter because she was here, in his arms, she was safe. 

“I just couldn’t lose you again,” he breathed into her hair, “I wouldn’t have survived. If you had died, I would have died right along with you, and I couldn’t do it. If you hated me for the rest of our lives, it didn’t matter, because you would be alive.”

“I would rather have died than let anything happen to Madi,” she said, and he kissed the side of her head, just instinctively, like he had been doing it for years, but it made her stiffen up again. 

He sighed, “I know, and I’m sorry. But I don’t regret it, because it got you out of there. You’re safe.”

It was small, almost inaudible, but he heard it when she whispered, “I missed you.”

And then it was like the floodgates had been opened and his own body was wracked with sobs as he gripped her, burying his face into her hair until all his air was stained with Clarke, the smells of the valley fading away as she filled up his lungs. There was so much more he wanted to say, so many years to make up for, but in that moment all he wanted was to hold her, to make up for the wrongs they’d done each other since he’d returned. 

“I missed you, Clarke. _For so long_. But now I’m home,” he breathed, and she relaxed her grip on his shirt so that she could loop her arms around his neck and tug him closer until every inch of their bodies were touching.

 _“Now you’re home,”_ she echoed, and he could feel her pulse racing against her skin, and her nose pressed into his neck, Clarke hugging him like he was her lifeline, Bellamy hugging her like nothing else mattered, and yeah – this was the only place he’d ever really felt at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna be honest, this one was harder to write than the other two for some reason - I don't know, it just hurt a lot. Maybe because I was writing from both perspectives instead of just Clarke's? 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you liked it! 
> 
> Don't worry, if you like having your heart ripped from your chest, I have a few more ideas for this that will all be up before the next episode. I'm trying out a one-a-day thing. 
> 
> Come and yell at me on [tumblr](https://talistheintrovert.tumblr.com/), you know you want to.


	4. I Felt Like You Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, I couldn't leave well enough alone! 
> 
>  
> 
> _"Could you possibly do a part three where everyone forgives Clarke because they see that she needs them because she’s broken and they help fix her because it what she deserves and I love her and everyone should to (especially Bellamy)._
> 
> Yes I can Emma, I hope you like it!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This idea comes from a comment left on one of my previous ideas, so never let it be said that I don't take suggestions. 
> 
> We're getting closer to the *hopefully* actual confrontation now, and I'm nervous as to what the show is going to do with it, so of course that meant I had to write more about it:  
>  _Have some misunderstood Clarke feeling very isolated and her family coming together to take care of her, because sometimes, I need my angst to feel a little more cuddly and a little less screaming match-y._

__

_It's like walking around with a stone for a heart_  
_People swimming in honey as your life falls apart_  
_It's cold and it's dark and there's no way out_  
_I felt like you once, I wish I could shout_  
  
_You never can undo the brain_  
_Now it knows of the holes, it will fall as it's trained_  
  
_Cause there's things to do_  
_There's a life to live_  
_Watch them laugh_  
_While you stay in, the rain_  
**Down - Dodie Clark**  


Clarke should have known the peace wouldn’t last. The war had been over for barely ten minutes, and now Echo had started a new one. She stalked towards her, backing her into a corner. It was just the two of them in the house that used to be Clarke’s, now converted into a surgery. Everything felt so wrong, so out of place – Clarke’s house was no longer her home, and maybe her family wasn’t either.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Echo snarled. 

Clarke jutted her chin out, refusing to be intimidated, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re the one who left Bellamy for dead, and yet you have the nerve to treat him like he’s done something wrong?” Echo was still moving forward, and Clarke stepped back, hitting the makeshift operating table in the center of the room.

“He betrayed me, Echo, he gave Madi the flame, her put her in danger, I think I’m entitled to be angry,” Clarke snapped back, crossing her arms defensively. 

“Madi was never in any danger, _you_ left him to die.” Echo looked like a lion stalking her pray, every muscle coiled to attack, and Clarke had seen that before. She’d been that before: when people threatened the ones she loved. 

“Madi is a child, one that Bellamy swore to protect, and he put her in harm’s way.” Clarke hissed, “the Bellamy I knew would never have done that. But I guess it’s easy to learn betrayal when you spend six years in space with a traitor.”

She didn’t really mean it, she was just lashing out, but Echo moved quickly, snatching a handful of Clarke’s hair and yanking it back. Her knife was suddenly pressed against Clarke’s throat, digging into her skin and drawing blood as she leaned over her, forcing her almost on top of the table. The front door was behind her, and it sounded as though someone had opened it, but she couldn't see.

“I would never betray him, like you did,” Echo leaned on her harder, dragging her head down, “I love him, and he loves me.”

Clarke scoffed, “don’t talk to me about loving Bellamy, Echo, I’ve been in love with him a lot longer than you, and it clearly doesn’t make a difference. He betrayed me anyway.” 

There was a noise that sounded like a sharp intake of breath behind her, but Clarke couldn’t turn around to look. Echo’s eyes flicked up and she looked almost worried for a moment before they dropped back to Clarke. 

“So that’s what this is about – you’re bitter that he moved on.” There was an almost blatant smugness about the way she said it, and it made Clarke’s blood boil. 

She snapped. 

Clarke shoved her back, and she stumbled, the knife tumbling to the floor and skidding under the makeshift operating table. 

“No, it’s about the man I spent _six years_ waiting for betraying me to save his family.” Clarke yelled, and now she was the one in control, forcing Echo into a corner, yanking her gun from her belt, “it’s about him promising we would get out of there _together_ , and then leaving me chained up while he made my daughter ascend. It’s about losing my family, everyone I loved, and waiting for them to come back, only for none of them to care anymore! It’s about being left behind, again and _again_ and _AGAIN!”_

Her voice was breaking now, and Echo’s fire had vanished, replaced with something like sympathy, but that only made Clarke angrier.

“Always, _always_ the decisions fell on me. No matter what I did, there was always another sacrifice, always another disaster that I couldn’t prevent. I pulled the lever at Mount Weather to save my people at the cost of theirs. I killed a man I loved to stop his suffering, but it didn’t stop _mine_. I lost friends, and family, and people I loved. And in the end, I sacrificed myself to save them, because I couldn’t fathom losing any more. _Not again_. I was going to die, but it didn’t matter because I had finally been given an easy choice – me for them. Well the universe must have a cruel sense of humour, because I didn’t die. I was stuck here, alone, _praying_ that one day I wouldn’t be.”

She was gripping the gun so tightly that it was shaking at her side, and her heart was thrumming in her ears as the breath caught in her throat. She was going to cry, she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself now. 

“But I am. I’m more alone than I’ve _ever been_ , because I don’t have Bellamy, and I don’t have my Mom, and now I don’t even have my daughter, because the chip changed her. Everyone I love is here, and I keep wishing they weren’t, because maybe then I wouldn’t feel so isolated. I almost understand why Jasper did what he did, because at least he made a choice that ended his misery. I can’t even make that choice anymore.”

She was crying now, and Echo looked more than a little alarmed, backing towards the back door slowly.

“I sacrificed _everything_ and I never got anything in return, not once. All I get is pain and suffering and loss, and you, you betrayed your king and your people, and even _Bellamy_ but somehow the universe rewarded you. You became a family up there, while I wandered the Earth alone. You lived and loved each other, while I held a gun to my head and prayed for it to end my pain. You loved Bellamy and he loved you back while I radioed him _every day_ just waiting for him to come home.”

There were the unmistakable noises of people behind her, but she didn’t care if anyone else heard – she needed to say it, just once.

“You had a chance I never had – to be happy and loved and to _live_. So don’t you dare come at me with accusations of betrayal because you can’t betray someone who doesn’t care about you.” She cried, her gun hanging limply at her side, and Echo leaned back to reach for the door handle, turning it slowly while she maintained eye contact. But Clarke didn’t care about the other woman anymore.

She slid down against the nearest cabinet, her body wracked with sobs, and pulled her knees up against her chest, pressing her face into them to try and block out the world. She was practically hyperventilating with something like panic, and she barely noticed as medical supplies clattered to the floor by the operating table, bouncing loudly. She assumed it was caused by Echo ducking out, so she didn’t move, she just cried harder into her knees, feeling the tears dampen her pants, spreading down the material and making her even more uncomfortable. 

Then someone was prying her fingers from around the gun and clasping her shaking hand in both of his strong ones. She knew who it was before she looked up. She would recognise those hands holding hers anywhere, it didn’t matter how long it had been.

“Clarke,” Bellamy said softly, his voice hoarse and cracked, like he was on the verge of tears himself. 

She only sobbed harder.

“Clarke, I’m so sorry,” he murmured. She felt him sit down beside her, shoulder bumping against hers, as he ran his thumb over her knuckles. 

“How much did you hear?” She managed. 

He sighed, a long, deep noise that reverberated through her; a noise that communicated how emotional he was, and how badly he was hiding it, “All of it. Echo wasn’t exactly quiet when she attacked you, so all of us were already inside by the time you started yelling.”

“All of you?” Clarke mumbled. 

“Yeah, Clarke, we’re all here,” Raven’s voice said, and then she felt the familiar frame of her friend flop down on her other side and lean against her, intertwining Clarke’s free hand in hers.

“I’m sorry we made you feel that way,” Monty said, sounding guilty. 

She looked up blearily, “It’s not your fault.”

Bellamy had said ’all of us’ but she wasn’t quite sure what that meant until she glimpsed it with her own eyes. Her mother, Kane and Jackson were standing next to Diyoza, who was leaning against the operating table, where Murphy was sitting, dangling his legs over the edge, medical supplies lying haphazardly below him. Niylah was hovering behind them, watching with that pensive frown of hers, and Echo was standing by the back door, practically guarding it. Emori and Harper were on Murphy’s other side, and Monty’s hand was in hers, as he stared down at Clarke with sympathy in his eyes. Shaw and Miller were standing by the front door, as if to stop anyone else from getting in, and Madi was standing between Gaia and Indra, who each had a hand on her shoulder. 

Everyone she loved was standing over her, and rather than making her feel better, it only reminded her how destroyed she was. 

“Yeah, it is,” Bellamy’s voice rumbled through her and she forced her gaze on him, despite how much it hurt.

There was a sadness in his eyes that she hadn’t seen in a long time, and shame creasing his forehead. _This_ was a Bellamy she recognised – not the confident man from the sky who used his head, but the boy who fell to Earth with her so many years ago; afraid and trying so very hard to hide it. 

She opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn’t articulate how she felt – she had managed to spew out her insecurities in anger but now that there were people willing to listen, she didn’t know what to say. 

“No, it’s not, I’m just… broken.”

“Baby, you’re not broken,” Abby murmured, crouching down in front of her, and then Clarke’s tears returned with a vengeance, and her breath seemed just out of reach. 

“The world’s been trying to break me since the dropship landed, Mom.”

“But you don’t let it, Clarke. _Not you_. You’ve never let it break you.”

Clarke tried to heave more oxygen into her lungs, “Maybe I’m done fighting it.”

“No,” it was Monty who was stepping forward now, “Clarke, if there’s one thing you are, it’s resilient.”

“You don’t even know me anymore, Monty.”

He looked a little taken aback, and almost sad, before he crouched down next to her mother and stared right into her eyes, “That’s not true. You’ll always be the woman who saved us, over and over and over again. You’ll always be the Clarke who took charge and kept us safe.”

“You’ll always be the girl who made the hard choices, but you can’t let that break you, not now,” Raven said, tightening her grip on her fingers. 

“You’re going to be okay,” Marcus said softly, “You can get through anything, Clarke.”

“You can’t be a cockroach if you roll over and take it, Clarke,” Murphy quipped, grinning at her, and Emori smacked him in the chest. He rolled his eyes at her and continued, “You’ve got to fight it, even if what you’re fighting is in your own head. Take it from someone who knows – you’re not alone.”

The room fell silent after that: it wasn’t often that John Murphy said something heartfelt.

Clarke felt overwhelmed, too vulnerable, crying in front of everyone, but she didn’t have the strength to stop. Bellamy seemed to understand how uncomfortable he was, or maybe he just wanted to hold her, because he draped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. She closed her eyes as she buried her face into Bellamy’s chest, wrapping her arms around him and holding onto him like a lifeline.

“We still love you, Clarke,” Raven breathed, curling her own arms around Clarke’s waist and resting her forehead between her shoulder blades, _“Always.”_

Maybe she imagined it, but it really felt like Bellamy murmured the same word into her hair, like a promise, and she clutched him a little tighter. His face was pressed into the top of her head, and she could feel some of his own tears running down her hair, but it didn’t matter because she was wrapped up in Bellamy like she used to be, and she felt more at home than she had done in a long time. 

She didn’t know how long she sat there in silence, surrounded by her family, but eventually someone burst into the room, past Miller’s irritated expression, and up to Abby, “Lissa fell in the woods and she’s hurt, real bad.”

“Alright,’ Abby sighed and put a hand on Clarke’s shoulder, “Honey, you need to get some rest. You’ve been pushing yourself far too much for far too long.”

“I’m fine,” she wiped her eyes furiously, but Jackson was stepping forward now. 

“No you’re not. You’re on bedrest for the next few days, Doctor’s orders. We’ll keep an eye on you, make sure you aren’t doing anything strenuous, because you need a break Clarke.”

“I think you’ve earned it,” Harper said sincerely, and there was a collective nod around the room.

“We’ll all take turns keeping you in line,” there was a smile in Indra’s voice, and Clarke wondered, not for the first time, whether Indra had a softer spot for her than she let on. 

“Who’s got first shift on Clarke-Watch?” Murphy teased, and all eyes in the room landed on Bellamy, which for some reason made Clarke blush on his behalf, or maybe her own. 

Bellamy murmured, “C’mon Princess, let’s get you to bed.”

“ _I’m fine_ , I just–”

“I wasn’t asking,” he grumbled, and then he scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the house. 

If she was heavy, he didn’t let on, he just strode through the camp of people, ignoring the odd looks they were garnering, and into a small hut on the outskirts of the village, where she recognised a few of the shirts hanging as his. He’d taken her to his own place, to take care of her. To be honest, she wasn’t sure where her home was supposed to be anymore, because what used to be hers was now a doctor’s office, and the village had filled up with people staking claim to different huts and houses. 

She was glad he hadn’t asked where she was staying, that he had just taken her somewhere quiet and safe. He laid her down in a bed and drew the covers over her, stroking her hair from her eyes like he had done six years ago, before everything fell apart, and she felt the overwhelming urge to cry again. 

“I’m a mess,” she said shakily, covering her eyes with her forearm. 

“It’s okay to be a mess, Clarke,” he whispered, “It doesn’t make any of us think any less of you.”

“But it should,” she said, and her voice was sharp again, frustration clearing her head, “I left you behind, Bellamy, because I was upset and alone... and I shouldn’t have, but I did it anyway.”

“You did it for Madi. You had to keep her safe.”

_“No.”_

“No?”

“It wasn’t just to get Madi to safety, Bellamy, I chose to leave you there, knowing that if I did, you might not make it out alive. _I chose that._ I left you behind. I made a monster of myself.”

He sighed and climbed into the bed next to her, tucking her into his side, “I seem to recall you making a very good argument to the contrary when I told you _I_ was a monster.”

She sniffled and sat up enough to see his face, her hand on his chest, “Because you were never a monster, Bellamy. You’ve only ever done what you thought was best for everyone else.”

“And you haven’t?” He asked, raising an eyebrow, “Even if you had wanted to stay and get me out, you have to know, rationally, that you wouldn’t have been able to. And if you’d stayed and Madi had been hurt, or worse, you never would have forgiven yourself, and neither would I. It’s okay, Clarke. I forgive you for leaving.”

“I don’t deserve that.”

“I don’t deserve forgiveness for giving Madi the flame either. That’s a call I made, and I have to live with it. We both have to shoulder the choices we make, Clarke, but we don’t have to do it alone. We have each other. We’ve always had each other; even when we hated each other enough to scream and fight, we still forgave each other. I’m hoping we can do it now,” he said softly, his fingers carding through her hair.

She lay her head back down over his heart, listening to it thrumming softly, and curled in closer, not wanting to relinquish the moment to the outside world. He was right – it had always been her and Bellamy, standing together against everything the world threw at them – and maybe that was why she had felt so broken for so long. Because she didn’t have someone there with her, taking some of the weight off her shoulders. 

“I love you, Bellamy,” she mumbled into his skin, “I should have said it before, but I was scared of losing you. Then I lost you anyway, and it didn’t matter anymore because you were gone, but… I missed you.”

He gripped her a little tighter and his heart beat a little faster, and they lay there in silence for a long time, Clarke slowly drifting off while he held her in his arms. She was almost asleep, and not entirely convinced it wasn’t a dream, when he breathed, “I love you, Clarke. You have no idea how much, or how much I… how much it hurt when we left you behind. But I’m doing my best to make up for it.”

She tried to tell him that there was nothing to make up for, but her tongue felt heavy and she couldn’t shake the grip of sleep off long enough to get the words out.

* * *

* * *

The next few weeks were hard. Clarke was still so exhausted, but now she was irritated as well, because her friends were watching her like hawks, not letting her do anything strenuous. Madi was practically attached to her at the hip, and Abby and Marcus were never far away either. Raven kept asking for help with things that Clarke knew damn well she could handle on her own, and Monty constantly offered to bring her food and flowers to brighten her day. She kept catching people checking up on her, and Echo had come up and apologised a few days after the incident. A week after that, Echo and Bellamy broke up, but he didn’t talk to Clarke about it, and she didn’t push the issue. 

Murphy started spending a lot more time with her, shooting her mocking looks and grinning into his food whenever Bellamy offered to help her with something. She had taken to kicking his shins under the table, but the truth was she really loved John Murphy and his teasing, and she loved him even more when he found her crying behind the shower block one night and talked to her for hours until she calmed down.

She didn’t resent her friends taking care of her, she had just spent so long being by herself that she couldn’t really remember how to deal with it anymore. It wasn’t until Diyoza followed her into the woods that she really got sick of the attention. 

“I just want to go for a walk!” She snapped, exasperated. 

“I’m not stopping you, I’m just coming with you,” Diyoza said.

“You’re pregnant, you should be resting,” Clarke tried. 

Diyoza just rolled her eyes, “So should you, but I have a feeling neither of us are enjoying being cooped up while everyone else does all the work. It’s not in our nature.”

Well, she couldn’t deny that. 

And, blissfully, Diyoza seemed to enjoy walking in silence as much as she did, so they marched through the undergrowth and down to the water. Clarke immediately started stripping off, until she was down to just her underwear and slowly slid into the lake. It was cool and refreshing and for a moment she was back before the Eligius ship came down, swimming for fun because there was nothing else to worry about. Then she remembered the pangs of loneliness she always got while she was out here; the quiet just reminding her how much noise she used to be surrounded by. 

After a moment, she realised that Diyoza had followed her into the river, and was paddling further away, giving her some space. She had decided in the last week or so that she really did like the other woman, despite their rocky beginnings. Like her, Diyoza was just trying to do the best for her people – hadn’t Clarke helped torture Lincoln for information to save Finn?

It was the most peaceful moment she’d had in weeks, and despite her wishes for this kind of quiet, she suddenly found herself missing the people she had gone on this walk to take a break from. A painful kind of worry sprung up in her mind, that if she couldn’t see them, something bad could be happening to them, that they could be taken away from her. 

She forced herself to take a few deep breaths. 

They were okay. She knew that. She just needed reminders every now and then. So when she and Diyoza wandered back to camp, she initiated conversation, started asking her about the old days, and listening to her stories. 

Madi came bounding up to her as the houses came into view, and Murphy followed soon after, both of them gushing about the cool stuff they’d found in yet another bunker on the edge of the valley. Emori, Raven and Shaw asked her to come and look at the motorbike they were building out of spare parts they were collecting, and Echo dropped by to ask her about the gun mounted to the hood of the rover. Niylah, Miller and Jackson offered lazy waves from where they were lounging by the fire, and Abby and Marcus dragged Diyoza away to discuss the crib they were building for Hope. 

Bellamy broke away from his conversation with Indra and Gaia to jog over to her.

“Hey, you went swimming without us?” He teased.

“Maybe,” she smiled back, and he put an arm around her shoulder as they walked over to the communal kitchen. She leaned into his side, breathing him in, reminding herself that he was _here_ , he was _okay._

They grabbed some food and then went and sat down in the grass next to his cabin, just watching the hustle and bustle of the last of the human race as they moved about their days.

“Be honest,” he said, ducking his head closer to hers conspiratorially, “Did you ever think we’d get here? From where we started, seven years ago, did you ever think we’d actually make it to peace?”

She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, “If I’m being honest, sometimes I wonder if I’m still lying in the desert after Praimfaya, dying alone, surrounded by death–”

Bellamy’s sharp intake of breath was clear enough to tell her to change the subject, but she pressed ahead anyway. 

“–because this is too perfect. Nothing has ever been this easy for us. It feels too good to be true.”

He nosed against her hair, “This didn’t come easy, Clarke, but maybe that’s what _makes_ it so perfect. All the hardships we went through to get here just make the peace more recognizable.”

She turned her head and pressed her lips to his shoulder, “I know. I just don’t believe it sometimes. It’s too… it’s… I just don’t believe it.”

He sighed and slid his arm around her waist, kissing her hair, “Believe it, Princess. If you don’t, I’m not sure I can either. You’re not the only one who had a rough six years.”

“Yeah but I was _alone_ ,” she felt that familiar lump rising in her throat, “You had our friends; your family.”

He pulled away from her and cupped her face in his hands, eyes earnestly searching hers, “But I didn’t have _you.”_

Clarke managed a small smile, looking up at him and wondering how she had ever managed to wait so long for his return. She said solemnly, “I missed you.”

He grinned in return, and her mood brightened immediately just from the joy in his cheeks, “Luckily, we don’t have to miss each other anymore. You’re stuck with me.”

She rolled her eyes and said sarcastically, “Oh _no.”_

And then he was kissing her, and she was winding her hands into his hair and yanking him closer. Murphy was the first to notice, wolf-whistling in their direction, and then their friends were squealing and pointing at them, alerting the whole camp to it. When Bellamy drew back, she stopped him from going far with a hand at the back of his neck and brushed her nose against his jaw. 

“How long have you been waiting to do that?” She breathed. 

“I refuse to answer that, because then you will realise the truly embarrassing amount of time I have wasted _not_ doing that,” he said, kissing her again. 

“Me too,” she murmured against his lips. 

“I know. Maybe we’ll actually have a chance this time, without sacrificing anything,” and the way he said it sounded like a question, or maybe a prayer, and she fell a little bit more in love with him. 

She would tell him how she felt one day, when she wasn’t yelling it at his ex-girlfriend in a blind rage. She would tell him how much she loved him, and for how long, but not today. Today she was content kissing her best friend in the grass while their family teased them and Murphy bragged about how long he’d known it was going to happen. It was first moment since everyone had returned that she truly stopped feeling alone, and isolated, and started feeling like she was part of something again. 

Clarke Griffin had her family back, and she was never letting go of them again. 

Especially not Bellamy Blake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You get some angst! And YOU get some angst! EVERYBODY GETS SOME ANGST! (and a bit of fluff too, I'm not a monster)
> 
> Yes, this did have a cheesy ending but sometimes I just NEED a bit of cheesiness when it comes to these two, because the actual canon of this show is slowly killing me and I need to imagine literally any kind of happy ending for my OTP. Honestly, this isn't really Hakeldama 2.0 speculation anymore, it's just me mentally preparing myself for a lack of Bellarke in the finale. 
> 
> I hope you liked it, and thank you so much for all your comments and kudos, they really brighten my day.  
> If you have any ideas or prompts for more of these, feel free to comment, or ask me on tumblr!


	5. Everything That Once Felt Real (Does Not Feel Anymore)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke can't handle the peacetime and she starts to feel estranged from her family, so she runs away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit shorter, but it's still dramatic and angsty, and that's what you came for, right?
> 
> The walking away fic that the lovely elijahclarke asked for, gosh I hope you like it!

_I'm gonna keep on walking_  
_'Cause I've been walking for days_  
_And there are blisters in my feet_  
_And they have turned to graze_  
_It's like I'm walking through a maze_  
_Of my own_  
_'Cause running from something_  
_Just to turn around and_  
_Find you were running from yourself all the time_  
  
_'Cause everything that once felt real_  
_Does not feel anymore_  
_Everything that once felt real_  
_Does not feel anymore_  
_Around here…_  
  
**Around Here – Thelma Plum**

Clarke didn’t know why she expected anything to feel any different after the war ended. It was foolish, really, having hope after all this time. She should know better.

Yet she still found herself feeling hopelessly let down by the utter lack of change. She still felt alone. The only difference now was that she felt alone when the people she loved were sitting right next to her. Every day she woke up and went outside and it felt like she was drowning. 

Because her mother was here. Her friends, her family, they were all here. Bellamy was _here_ … and she’d never felt further away from them. 

She was drowning silently in a never-ending ocean of loneliness, and she could see the shore, where her family was sitting, laughing in the warm sun. She felt like she was constantly trying to call out, but there was water in her lungs and no-one was paying attention as the tide pulled her further and further away.

Two weeks after the war ended, she decided she couldn’t take it anymore. Everything was so loud and encompassing and more alive than it had been in six years and it was just too heavy, the weight of everything pushing in at her from all sides. It was simultaneously too much and not enough and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. 

The decision was surprisingly easy, and she packed her belongings in silence, shoving her pack under her bed before Madi came home. 

_Madi._

She was the most heartbreaking loss of all. Her daughter, who was no longer the girl she’d spent six years raising and was now a culmination of all the commanders long since dead: an unrecognizable shadow of the girl she once was. Clarke could barely look at her without feeling her heart constrict, and it was only getting worse. Madi had become a figurehead after the war, ordering people around and making executive decisions with Marcus and Diyoza. It was exactly what Clarke had wanted to avoid with her. The very last thing Clarke had wanted was for Madi to become like her, yet here she was, taking on all that responsibility far too young, and it was like a painful déjà vu, weighing on Clarke’s shoulders, because she did that. She let her daughter become that – it was on her. 

She would leave in the night, so that she didn’t have to try and explain her agony to a bunch of people that she loved but knew would never understand. 

“Hey,” Madi said as she ducked into the cabin, “We need help picking berries, and I told Diyoza that you know where all the good stores are, so she wants to know if you can head up a foraging party?”

For a moment, she considered refusing, saying she was too tired. Then she realised that if she spent all afternoon in the forest, she could find the easiest way out of the village without being spotted. She knew the valley like the back of her hand, but in the two weeks since the war ended, the village had been expanding and she wasn’t sure exactly how far out it went anymore. So she agreed. 

“Sure, Madi,” she sighed, “Let me just get something to eat first, then I’ll go.”

“Okay,” the girl stood in the doorway for a moment, as if she was going to say something, and instead she turned and walked from the house with a tense smile.

Maybe she knew what Clarke was planning. It seemed she had enough of Clarke’s memories in her head already, maybe she had already worked out what she was thinking. Or maybe not. It had been six years, after all – Clarke wasn’t the same person she used to be. That was the problem. 

She packed some of her stuff in a small pack, in case she found somewhere to stash it on their walk, and took a group of people out into the underbrush with her. Harper and Emori tagged along and struck up a conversation while they walked. 

“So how long did it take you to find the valley, when you first left the lab?” Harper asked, cheerily bumping shoulders with her. 

Clarke tried to swallow around the lump that had suddenly taken up residence in her throat, “Um, not that long… a few months maybe, or… probably longer.”

She knew exactly how long it had been, but she also knew that the day she found a valley was not a memory she cared to revisit – how desperate and alone she had been… not today, when she already felt so separate from her surroundings. 

“Wow, so you trekked through the desert for that long?” Emori asked, “I gotta say, that’s impressive, Clarke.”

“Uh, thanks, Emori,” she said awkwardly, before quickly changing the topic, “Not as impressive as getting these idiots back to the ground.”

And then Harper and Emori were regaling her with tales from the Ring, and she tried not to feel so lost, she really did, because she loved her friends and she was so glad that they were back, and they were safe, but a small part of her heart was still missing. The more they talked, the more she realised that she’d left that part of herself behind in Praimfaya, that it had burned up as she watched the rocket lift into the sky. 

“…then, _of course_ , Murphy decided that he would be the one to do it,” Emori said, rolling her eyes, and Harper giggled knowingly. 

Clarke joined them in their smiles, but she found herself mentally drifting further and further away, caught in a riptide as the two women danced easily together along the shoreline. 

She made mental notes of where the ever-expanding village ended, and when she showed the group where the berries grew at their thickest, she took advantage of the distraction to hide the small pack in some of the ferns off to the side, where it wouldn’t be found unless someone was already looking. 

Luckily, no-one noticed that she was walking back to camp without her bag; all of them were too busy cooing over the fruits and laughing about their luck. 

She spent the afternoon visiting each of her friends in turn, trying to say goodbye without alerting them to the fact that she was leaving. 

She had stopped by Raven and Zeke’s workshop, grinning at their slow-moving attempt to build a motorcycle from scraps, and they had both complained good-naturedly back. 

She made sure to give her mother a hug, which hurt more than it should have, but when it was over Abby looked lighter than she had done in years, and Clarke felt that her own pain was worth it if Abby felt a little better. 

She helped Monty plant some vegetables and told him how lucky he was to have Harper, and how lucky Harper was to have him. He blushed and bumped shoulders with her, tried to tell her that she would have that one day too. Her stomach clenched, because she knew she wouldn’t, but she smiled at him anyway, shrugging. 

She nodded at Indra and discussed possible building extensions with Diyoza and Marcus, and even managed a small smile in Echo’s direction, though it wasn’t returned. She even gave Gaia some advice about where the nicest places to swim in the river were and showed Miller and Jackson one of the bunkers she’d found a few years back. When the sun finally began to dip below the horizon, there were only three people she hadn’t seen, and one of them was sprinting in her direction. 

“Looks like you’ve been doing the rounds today, Griffin,” Murphy yelled as he jogged up to her.

This time, Clarke’s smile was natural, almost easy, because of everyone, Murphy understood her the most; even if he didn’t realise it. She quirked an eyebrow at him, “Is that a crime?”

“Yeah, but what am I going to do, float you?” He draped an arm over her shoulder and leaned in conspiratorially, “Seriously Clarke, what’s going on with you? You’ve spent the past two weeks moping around your cabin and then today you decide to actually become a functioning member of society? Did someone slip you some weird berries or something, because if so, I want in.”

“No, I just… wanted to spend time with everyone,” she said, poking him in the side. 

“Because you’re leaving,” he said quietly, and it wasn’t a question. 

She stiffened and glanced over at him. He met her anxious gaze with a pensive one of his own.

“I know what that looks like, Clarke. I did it on the Ring. There came a point where I couldn’t deal with everyone anymore, because I felt so stuck while they all looked like they were moving forward. I decided to cut myself off from everyone, because it was easier than watching them get better while I stayed the same, and I did exactly what you’re doing. I spent some time with each of them, and then I caused a huge scene and argued and fought until I had half the ship to myself because no-one wanted to deal with my crazy. But I also _know you_ , so my guess is you’re just going to slip away in the night.”

Clarke opened and closed her mouth, unsure what to say. 

He took pity on her and pulled her into a hug, “I’m not going to tell anyone, and I’m not going to stop you, Clarke. I just wanted you to know that if you ever want to come back, I’ll still be here.”

She sniffled, suddenly feeling far too emotional, and hugged him back a little tighter, burying her face into his shoulder. The shore seemed a little closer when Murphy was by her side. 

But not close enough to consider staying.

She pulled away and managed a watery smile, “I’ll see you around, Murphy.”

He sighed, sadness creasing his eyes, “No you won’t. Bye Clarke.”

He offered a half-hearted wave as he trudged back to his quarters, and she wiped her eyes and returned to her room. The two people that would be the hardest to say goodbye to, and she’d managed to leave them until last; maybe she did it on purpose, to punish herself for abandoning them. She ended up back at her cabin, and she lay down for a moment, trying to get her bearings. 

Madi stopped by as she was heading to the dining hall for dinner, “Hey, you’ve been busy today, I missed you.”

 _“You’ve_ been busy for weeks; now you know how _I_ feel,” Clarke joked and Madi pushed her playfully. 

“No fair,” she grumbled, but her cheeks were rosy with the smile she was trying to hide, and Clarke tried to commit that look to memory, because it was one of her favourites. Madi chucked her jacket over the bed and stretched as she walked back towards the door, “You coming?”

“Maybe later,” Clarke smiled, “I’m tired. Love you, Madi.”

“I’ll bring you some bread and fish back,” Madi promised as she darted away, and then Clarke was alone. 

She tried to work up the nerve to say goodbye to the last person on her list, but the more she thought about it, the more she felt like she had a weight tied to her ankle and she was sinking unstoppably to the bottom of the ocean. Because she loved Bellamy, but he was the person that made her feel the most like she didn’t fit anymore. He had his family, and Echo, and his happiness, and he didn’t need her anymore. Maybe he never had – maybe it was only ever _her_ happiness that had depended on _him_. 

She had spent six years pinning her hopes to him coming home, and when he had… she didn’t have a home anymore. It wasn’t his fault, but it hurt every time he looked at her with that unreadably sad expression in his eyes, like she was being tortured from within. Waterboarded with isolation. 

She hated herself, and she especially hated the small part of herself that resented him, because he didn’t deserve it. 

So when darkness fell and she finally had her window of escape, she didn’t even think about it, she just slid her bag out from under her bed and swung it over her shoulders. Everyone was busy in the dining hall, laughing and eating together like they belonged, and she had just enough time to slip away before they noticed she was gone. 

She hiked her bag up on her back and chanced one last look over the village. 

It was warm and full of life and noise and joy, and she nodded to herself because she knew she was making the right decision leaving it behind. They deserved better than her. She spun on her heel and disappeared into the forest, not looking back even as the light faded around her and darkness enveloped everything in her path.

* * *

* * *

She wasn’t sure exactly how long she’d been walking, but she knew she was far enough away from the village to set up camp for the night because there wasn’t a single trace of them in the air – no scents, no sounds, no movement, except for the natural rustle of the leaves swaying in the breeze.

She dumped her bag on the ground in the mouth of the nearest cave and flopped down beside it, shuffling on her back until she had a view of the stars instead of the dark ceiling of rock. 

She lay there for minutes that stretched into hours, just breathing in the emptiness of the space around her, relaxing into it. 

The riptide that had been yanking her down all day seemed to let up and for the first time in a long time, she no longer felt as though she was alone, which was ironic, considering. But this was different – this time she was alone by choice, instead of having it forced upon her, or feeling it even while surrounded by people. This time she was alone but she didn’t feel _lonely._

So of course, that was when she heard something trampling through the bushes.

She sat up immediately, bolting back into the shadows of the cave, ducking behind a rock just as the figure came into view. She prayed it was an animal, but she knew as the figure got closer that it wasn’t. In fact, she knew exactly who it was. 

_Fuck._

Her heart dropped into her shoes and she forgot how to breathe all over again. 

Because Bellamy Blake was stomping angrily through the underbrush, torch in hand, and she had a horrible suspicion that he was looking for her. 

He stopped a moment to lean against a tree, panting. He ran his fingers through his messy curls and kicked aggressively at the dirt. She couldn’t keep looking at him, so she lay down behind the rock and tried to get her lungs back under control. The waves were washing back over her again. Now, though, instead of feeling helpless, she just felt angry. She was furious that Bellamy could still do this to her, even after everything. She was frustrated that after all the calm she’d been able to muster, one glimpse of him could send her reeling back into the deep waters of panic. 

Before she could stop herself, she was standing up and walking towards him, and his eyes were widening in shock. 

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” She snapped, poking him in the chest. 

He readjusted quickly and snatched her hand from the air before she had a chance to withdraw it, effectively holding her to him. 

“Looking for you,” he hissed, “What the hell are _you_ doing?”

 _“Leaving,”_ she lifted her eyes to the sky, “I thought that was obvious.”

“Yeah, I caught that when Madi came running back from your cabin _crying_ ,” he retorted, and she felt guilt gnawing at her insides, but she pushed it down. He pushed off the from the tree and leaned over her, “Why?”

“Because I don’t belong there,” she said, trying to regain her hand, but he just gripped it tighter.

“That’s not true,” he said, his eyes dark even in the light emanating from the torch at his side. 

She took a step back, but he moved with her, “Yes it is, Bellamy. You belong; you’re happy. I _don’t_ , and _I’m not.”_

He flinched, like she’d slapped him, and she felt her fingers burn from when she’d done just that. The guilt in her chest got a little larger, pushing at her ribs, and she tried to ignore it, but she was failing. 

“What?” His voice was barely a whisper, and the hurt on his face was so obvious, even in the dark. All she wanted was to make that go away, but the only thing she could think to do was to remove herself from the equation. 

“I’m not happy there, Bellamy. It just reminds me how much has changed, and how much I don’t belong.”

“Clarke, what are you talking about?” He asked earnestly, reaching for her other hand, “Of course you belong.”

She shook her head as tears threatened her vision, “Not anymore. You’re all different people, better people now, and I’m just… I’m not a part of that anymore. I thought I was okay with that, but it’s just so hard, and it was so much easier to just step away. Because all of you keep looking at me like I’m something you don’t quite recognise, like you’d only ever seen a painting and now the real thing doesn’t look right, and it hurts. I can’t stay there, Bellamy, please, you have to understand. I didn’t leave to hurt anyone, I left to make it easier, for all of us.”

“You leaving doesn’t make anything easier, for anyone!” He was getting irritated again now, and she moved back again, but still he mimicked her movements, both of her hands now enveloped in his, “Especially not me! God, Clarke, do you have any idea what it was like when Madi said you were missing?! It was like a part of me died all over again! And then when Murphy told us not to worry because you had _‘chosen to go’_ it was _worse!_ Because not only were you leaving, but you did it without even thinking about how much it would hurt!”

“That is not what happened!” Clarke protested, planting her feet and glaring up at him, “I _did_ think about how you would feel, and I realised that you would be better off without me!”

“No I wouldn’t!”

“You are!” She yelled, and it echoed, bouncing off the trees, “You _have_ been better off without me for the last six years! You were fine! And then the second you got down to the ground it all went haywire, and you kept looking at me like…” She trailed away, unable to finish the thought that had been plaguing her for weeks.

He looked at her expectantly, “Like what?”

“Nothing, forget it,” she snapped, finally managed to extricate herself from his grip and striding back to the mouth of the cave, intending to grab her bag and leave. But of course he stopped her, standing in her way, as usual. 

“I won’t forget it. Just like I didn’t forget you, not even for a _second_. Every moment on the Ring I spent thinking about you, and every moment since we returned to the ground has been a relief because I knew you were alive. So tell me, Clarke, what is it about me looking at you that upsets you so much?!”

She broke. 

_“Because I love you and you keep looking at me like I’m not here!”_

Now it was his turn to take a step back, completely thrown by her admission, and she was too, clapping her hands over her mouth as if that would fix everything. They stood that way for a long time, just staring at each other in various states of shock, until Bellamy finally got his bearings. 

“That’s not true.”

“Really? Because you’ve barely managed four words in my direction since we reached peace.”

“That’s not because…” he seemed flustered, and he was stuttering, “Look, I… it’s not- I…”

“Just forget it, Bellamy,” she said, resigned, “Go back to the village. Go back to the people you care about.”

“I care about you,” he said, and he’d never sounded so sure of anything. 

“Well I’m not going back.”

“Fine,” he said, and for half a second she thought that might be the end of it. But as she swung her bag back over her shoulder and pushed past him, he spun around and walked beside her, keeping pace as she moved further into the forest. 

“What are you doing?” She asked, exasperated. 

“Coming with you,” as if it was obvious. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bellamy, go back to your family,” she said tiredly. 

He shook his head, still just facing straight ahead, but she wasn’t going to let him do this, and when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object…

“Leave me alone! Go back to the people you love, Bellamy!”

“I love _you!”_ He bellowed, and then she wasn’t really sure how it happened but she was pressed against a tree with every inch of his body against hers and he was breathing heavily, their foreheads almost touching. She tried not to think about much she wanted this, how desperately she had been aching to be close to him, but it was impossible when she could feel his chest on hers and his hair brushing her temple.

"Please just let me go, Bellamy."

"Never," he growled, head dipping treacherously close, "I am never letting you go again."

She finally gave in and just buried her face in his shoulder and cried. He wrapped his arms around her as she sobbed, and when she finally pulled away, he let her. They stared at each other for a long moment, drowning eyes into earthy ones, and she shook her head, "I can't stay there. I just can't."

He nodded, and she could see that he understood, but she could also see that frustrating determination, "I know. But I can't leave you."

She couldn't help it. She smiled. 

"Guess I'm stuck with you then."

"Guess you are," he grinned back, and then as she started walking again, he fell into step beside her, "For as long as you need."

Maybe she would return to the village in a day, or a week, or a month, or maybe she would stay away forever, but right now, she had to walk away. Yet for some reason, Bellamy was walking with her, and she didn't feel like she was drowning. She was barely afloat, feet still kicking out at the current, but her head was above the water. For now, that would have to be enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting, I love you all so much! 
> 
>  
> 
> EDIT: I finished writing this just before the episode and now I'm so fucking sad and angry and......... I'm just... what's happening??????


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